Essie Shift Power

About a month ago, we took the kids to see the movie, Mirror Mirror.  Julia Roberts stars as the evil Queen, and she had this amazingly beautiful gold nail polish on.  The gold was not overly yellow gold, but paler and softer, almost matte, and yet mirror-like.  Oh gosh, does that even make sense?  While I thought the movie was "meh", I couldn't stop focusing in on the gold nail polish.  It commanded my full attention throughout the movie.  Seriously, I mentally went through every single gold polish I can think of, trying to figure out which one Miss Julia was wearing.  It was a little crazy; I could not stop thinking about it.

I recently participated in a nail polish box exchange.  It just happens I was next in line to received the box of polish.  When I went through all the bottles, I found this gold sitting in there, Essie Shift Power.  This was released in winter 2008 collection, and apparently it's also know as Shifting Power.  I'm not really sure why the two different names.  Not a normal pick for me, but my recent gold obsessed self said "yes, let's give this a try!"

Shift Power is described as "sizzling molten gold"...

Not the perfect gold on me, but it's okay.  It is a bit warmer than what I was looking for, but not too awful.

It was a bit too metallic and shimmery, so I decided to apply a layer of matte top coat.  I actually like the matte look.  It makes it more wearable for my skin tone.

Still a bit too warm for me, but the matte effect was the finish I was looking for. 

The formula on Shift Power was thin and runny.  I ended up using four coats due to the sheerness of it.  I wanted to cover up the visible nail line.  And very typical of metallic nail polish, brush strokes tends to show.  By matting the finish, it helps minimize some.  I ended up wearing this mani for the next 3 days, and I did like it.  It's a totally different look for me, but sometimes it's good step outside the box.